PHYSIO 2.0: A Garment-Embedded Physiological Monitoring Platform

Rugged, comfortable and reliable physiological monitoring systems are required to rapidly and systematically evaluate and respond to the physiological changes experienced by aircrew in high performance aircraft. Previous and ongoing work at institutions such as the United States (US)  Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIE) has resulted in notable sensor developments and substantial controlled test data to support the need for more widespread use. However, the reality of technology development and implementation to date is that rugged, fully functional sensor systems that meet comfort and cost requirements do not yet exist. Current physiological monitoring systems balance performance with flexibility.  Clinical monitoring systems provide exceptional physiological information at the expense of portability and robustness.  Monitoring systems for active users provide portability at the expense of more limited physiological information. To address this key market gap, Human Systems Integration, Inc. (HSI) (Walpole, MA) to develop a compression garment platform (PHYSIO) for aircrew physiological status monitoring. The PHYSIO electronic garment (eGarment) will be configurable, during manufacturing, to integrate any requisite sensor suite to enable the collection of pilot physiological data in the USAF cockpit environment with a principal goal of using this data to assess and, eventually, mitigate root causes for unexplained physiological events (UPEs) in high performance flight environments.